OTTAWA — President Biden used his first official trip to Canada since taking the Oval Office to underscore what he called an “inseparable” relationship between the United States and its northern neighbor, which had become badly frayed during the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
In place of Mr. Trump’s belittling comments about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his trade threats, the conversation between the two leaders on Friday turned repeatedly to the close ties between their two countries and to the announcement of agreements on several key issues, including migration, clean energy and protecting the Arctic.
The two leaders also condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and pledged to confront China’s expanding influence.
“Our destinies are intertwined,” Mr. Biden said in an address to Parliament that was frequently interrupted by applause, “not because of inevitability of geography, but because it’s a choice — a choice we made again and again. The United States chooses to link our future with Canada because we know that we’ll find no better partner.”
A migration agreement announced on Friday will lead to the almost immediate closing of an unofficial border crossing from the United States that has recently seen a surge of asylum seekers.
After long resisting Canadian efforts to reach the new agreement, Mr. Biden said on Friday that under the new terms, Canada would be able to immediately return all asylum-seeking migrants who traveled through the United States to the Canadian border.
Mr. Trudeau, during a news conference that followed a day of meetings, said that as of midnight Friday, asylum seekers will be sent back to the United States regardless of where they enter Canada. That includes the most popular illegal crossing, Roxham Road, between New York State and Quebec.
For its part, Canada will accept 15,000 migrants from Central and South America who are fleeing persecution and poverty, a move designed to reduce pressure on the United States’ southern border.
“Our teams have worked hard to achieve this agreement,” Mr. Trudeau said. “All of the work will make it possible to deter irregular immigration at our borders, while at the same time, we increase regular migration and immigration.”
The day of official meetings, speeches and a news conference was set to conclude with a gala before the president returned to Washington Friday night. Mr. Biden’s visit was delayed nearly two years, in part because of the Covid pandemic at the start of his term. The president briefly met with Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party and of the official opposition in the House of Commons.
During a brief conversation earlier Friday, Mr. Poilievre told Mr. Biden that Canada believed in a “loyal opposition,” to which Mr. Biden replied: “We do, too, unfortunately.”
There was a widespread sense of relief in Canada when Mr. Biden succeeded Mr. Trump, a president who insulted Mr. Trudeau and whose trade policies threatened Canada’s economy and diminished good will toward the United States.
Still, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trudeau discussed some areas of tension, including America’s desire for Canada to spend more on defense and the question of whether Mr. Trudeau would agree to lead an international force to help stabilize Haiti, the troubled Caribbean nation where gangs have unleashed a wave of terror.
The two leaders did not announce any significant new actions aimed at helping the beleaguered island. Instead, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trudeau both promised to work to help the national police in Haiti fight back against gangs in an effort to stabilize the country’s political situation. The police, outgunned and undermanned, have ceded much of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, to the gangs.
Mr. Biden said: “This is a work in progress.”
The migration agreement, which Mr. Biden formally announced during his remarks Friday afternoon, eased one area of potential disagreement as both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trudeau face increasing pressure to deal with migration.
But after the tumultuous Trump years, which led to tariffs on key Canadian industries, divided the nations on international relations and threatened the continental free trade agreement that is the backbone of Canada’s economy, officials emphasized that the meeting was more about showing how much Mr. Biden, Mr. Trudeau and their countries have in common.
In a joint statement issued after Mr. Biden’s speech, the two leaders vowed to continue supporting NATO allies and others in Europe by backing Ukraine in its yearlong fight against Russian aggression.
“We condemn Russia for its illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war against Ukraine, and will continue imposing economic costs on Russia, while maintaining our unwavering support for Ukraine for as long as it takes,” the statement said.
In an unanticipated move, Mr. Biden said that a Canadian astronaut would form part of the crew when the Artemis II space mission circles the moon, likely next year.
“We choose to return to the moon together,” he told the Parliamentarians and guests in the House of Commons.
Staving off a potential trade dispute, the president said that electric cars and trucks assembled in Canada, and which are overwhelmingly exported to the United States, will qualify for tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. Without such credits, Canada feared that production would gradually shift to plants in the United States.
Mr. Biden is generally aligned with Mr. Trudeau on climate change and other environmental issues — a keystone of the prime minister’s political agenda. The two leaders are also both critical of China.
A survey by Abacus Data, a public opinion polling firm based in Ottawa, found Canadians almost evenly divided between those who have a positive view of Mr. Biden, those with a negative view and those with no opinion at all about the president. That is in stark contrast to opinions about Mr. Trump, who was overwhelmingly unpopular in Canadian polling, and to opinions about Mr. Obama, who was more popular than any Canadian politician in polls.
In response to concerns about Canada’s limited military spending, a perennial complaint of all visiting presidents, Canada agreed to accelerate its plan to ultimately spend 38.6 billion Canadian dollars on modernizing systems for the joint Canada-U.S. air and coastal military command known as NORAD.
For Mr. Biden, the short summit was another opportunity to display his efforts to rally the international community behind global issues, using the power of the United States to confront challenges that straddle borders.
The migration deal reached by the two countries is one example. People in countries across the hemisphere are being increasingly displaced from their homes, reshaping global patterns of migration and putting pressure on countries like the United States and Canada.
John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told American reporters this week that Mr. Biden and Mr. Trudeau had been discussing the issue — and trying to resolve disagreements — for months.
“Issues of migration — we are well aware of Canadian concerns,” Mr. Kirby said. “We have concerns of our own. And — I mean, it’s a shared hemisphere, a shared regional challenge.”
Mr. Biden’s speech to Parliament was also an opportunity to highlight his efforts to build a global coalition to stand with Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and express gratitude for Canada’s enthusiastic participation in that effort.
Mr. Biden also underscored how much Canada and the United States are aligned in the fight against climate change. In his first two years, the president successfully pushed for passage of legislation to provide hundreds of billions of dollars worth of incentives on behalf of clean energy projects.
Mr. Trudeau has likewise invested significant political capital on the issue of global warming, pushing his country toward emissions reductions, and has implemented a national strategy to deal with the consequences of climate change.
“We’re going to amplify our shared commitment to climate action, while growing our economies,” Mr. Biden said in his address to Parliament.
